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Over the past few seasons, horror cinema has frequently delved into toxic romance with the same intensity as a cursed dating app. Starting with manipulated meet-cutes (New; Companion) to chronic emotional reliance (United) to the rare happy ending (Heart Eyes), it's evident that romantic relationships are primarily blood-stained hell, and a couple venturing to a secluded location together represents a new tier of terror.

Thus it's no shock when Liz (Tatiana Maslany) begins to feel uncomfortable on her short vacation with Malcolm (Rossif Sutherland) at the beginning in the new and much-concealed scary film Keeper. Liz and Malcolm have been together for approximately twelve months, which we discover quickly has marked the period Liz has bolted from past relationships. Nevertheless, she appears optimistic about this one. She believes she understands Malcolm quite thoroughly, and their initial moments together are not as filled with red flags or as suspiciously perfect as other recent figures in the doomed-couple genre. Liz has a cautious, deadpan comic timing, and Malcolm has a somewhat mumbled accent as he explains some oddities about his ancestral forest retreat (like the fact that he has a creepy relative who lives nearby). But their awkwardness levels are well-matched. They appear comfortable together.

Osgood Perkins introduces discord through his shot choices, rather than micro-aggressions or past events.

Liz and Malcolm's expressions are seldom outright hidden, but they're frequently partially blocked, shown from odd angles, or framed in scenes with a disconcerting amount of headroom. This establishes a pattern of confusion that continues as Liz believes she hears soft sounds through the house's vents. When she relaxes in the house's posh tub, there's an intensely unforgettable overlay of the adjacent river flowing all around her, as if she's about to go beyond space and time. "I feel like I took mushrooms," she tells a companion she calls when she's by herself at the cabin. Her friend inquires if she actually took mushrooms; Liz doesn't answer directly.

Initially, Keeper – titled after Liz's assumed status as the woman in Malcolm's life – seems like it could go in multiple directions, its horror elements blended in a dreamlike mix. Is it a supernatural tale, a slasher-in-the-woods movie, or just a terrible experience? Perkins, a horror specialist who has been on a prolific streak for the past 18 months with an additional film due out next year, complicates efforts to tell, both in-movie (so many of the creepiest initial scenes are instances just out of focus or in the corner of the eye) and extra-textually; his previous movies were the stylistically different serial-killer thriller Longlegs and the fate-based horror comedy The Monkey. This eclecticism, combined with Keeper's elusive and secretive ad campaign, could cause the latest release seem to some like a shell game intended to embellish what is, at its core, a pretty simple horror story.

Maybe it is that. But part of what makes Perkins' film so refreshing is the way it emphasizes its physical impact on an viewer above a wish to bend that story into a contemporary love allegory. As clever as so many current horror movies are, they frequently write for message rather than shooting toward immediacy. Consequently, some are lacking innovative visuals, unexpected contrasts or a sense of genuine, uncanny mystery. Keeper has all of this, and Perkins understands just how much to push those components without allowing the movie to turn into vague mystical excess.

The director also appears to know what a strong stabilizing force he has in Maslany, who doesn't need to perform the usual virtuoso showcase of a female on the brink of oblivion. Liz becomes alarmed by the strange occurrences that take place around her, and the role is scripted and performed with a particular directness. (She's not one of those scary movie leads who inexplicably sidesteps asking what the hell is happening.) However Maslany provides a second level to her acting in her unguarded times: a skeptical glance of her gaze in one direction or another, the tenuousness of her more courteous grins, the abbreviated of both her familiarity and speed to irritation with her unseen friend on the call. Though no particular master clue to her painful history awaits, the character still seems fully realized.

The same applies of the film as a whole, too. It's not as complex as Sinners nor as plot-daring as Weapons, two of 2025's standard-bearers for original horror. But when Keeper finishes up, its tight confines seem satisfying, appropriate and improbable to generate a follow-up. That tidiness drives home some of its themes in a way that the more obvious moralizing of other dating-hell stories don't always manage: perhaps it takes a fable-like horror for the messy affair of relationships to stay so perfectly contained.

• The film debuts in theaters on 14 November.